The apartment-house tenant must have the freedom to lean out of his window and as far as his arms can reach transform the exterior of his dwelling space. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and – as far as his arms can reach – paint everything pink, so that from far away, from the street, everyone can see: there lives a man who distinguishes himself from his neighbours, the pent-up livestock! He must also be allowed to cut up the walls and make all kinds of changes, even if this disturbs the architectural harmony of a so-called masterwork, and he must be able to fill his room with mud or children’s modelling clay.

I stumbled across this on the blog Granny Gets a Vibrator (thanks to ozarque for recommending it), which beats the pants off that stupid "red hat club" thing. Sorry, but joining a packaged, trademarked, commodified organization doesn't make you a rebel, whether you wear purple or not. Phooey.

In this area of the country, many people who own houses cannot even lean out their window without intruding on other people's land. And there are neighbourhood rules and regulations in many suburbs that would prevent you from painting your house pink, or even from becoming a Dish customer.

"Red hat club"? Feh. Kind of like all those wanna-be punks in the 80s who all looked the same. Sure, that's the punk spirit.

spiritualmonkey and I promised each other long ago that we will NEVER live anywhere subject to a CC&R agreement. A former coworker lived somewhere that the neighborhood association rules prohibited planting corn in one's backyard. Say what? I may be a 4th-generation consensus-agreement-driven Californian, but that kind of thing gets me ranting like a libertarian New Yorker.

I may think the chartreuse house a few blocks down is really ugly, but I'm very glad I live somewhere that it's allowed.